Stolen masterpieces recovered!
March 19 2012
Picture: AHT
Or perhaps not? There was a flurry of excitement in the press recently when it was announced that police in Rome had recovered 37 stolen masterpieces, by, amongst others, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Poussin. However, the image used to illustrate the Van Dyck manifestly did not show a picture by Van Dyck, so I didn't get that excited. And over on Art History Today, art historian and Poussin scholar Dr David Packwood casts doubt on the 'Poussin':
A clumsy composition- and those cherubs! As I spent a lot of time in my doctorate days looking at religious paintings by NP, I think I’m qualified to pronounce on this. So the owners bought a picture they thought was by Poussin, and the thieves stole it thinking the same? My guess is an Italianate painter trying to emulate Poussin, not very successfully. Or it could be a collaboration between Gaspar Poussin- Poussin’s brother-in-law-and an Italian artist? But the figures are too monumental for Gaspard, yet parts of the landscape recall NP.
25 years of TEFAF
March 19 2012
Video: TEFAF
This year, The European Fine Art Fair at Maastricht is 25 years old. Above is a video on the show and its history.
Auction houses selling ever more by private treaty
March 19 2012
There's an interesting snippet in the Antiques Trade Gazette showing how auction houses are conducting more and more private treaty sales. Last year, Sotheby's sold a total $4.9bn of works privately, up 7% from last year. That's 16.5% of their total sales.
The flipside of this, of course, is that an increasing number of works which appear at auction are not as 'fresh' as they might appear - freshness to market being a key driver of desirability at auction. In fact, such works are only in the auction because they have failed to sell when offered directly to clients as private treaty sales. I know of one major old master sold at auction in New York recently for $17 million (there's a clue), which had been touted around at prices of up to $50m before the sale. Not surprisingly, it generated only a single bid when it finally had its day at auction.
Why you should always get two auction estimates
March 19 2012
Picture: Christie's
There is a very sad tale in this week's Antiques Trade Gazette, which, however you look at it, reflects badly on the antiques world. In 2006, Lord Coleridge, needing to raise some funds, asked Sotheby's to look at his heirloom, 'the Coleridge Collar' (above). The Chain was said to have been worn by every Chief Justice of the Common Pleas between 1551-1873. But Sotheby's said it was late 17th Century, not a Tudor original, and valued it at £35,000. Seeing that the Chain was worth less than he had hoped to raise, Lord Coleridge made what he described as the 'traumatic' decision to sell his Devon home, Chanter's House, where his family had lived since the 18th Century. He also included the Chain in the sale to the new owners.
But then, two years later, the new owners sold the Chain, as a Tudor original, at Christie's for £313,250 (inc. premium). Lord Coleridge, understandably miffed, decided to sue Sotheby's. But last week he effectively lost the case, and now has to pay costs of many hundreds of thousands of pounds. From the ATG:
Essentially Lord Coleridge's case was that Sotheby's had taken too little time and care in researching the chain. His legal team set out to prove this with recourse to scientific testing, analysis of manufacturing techniques and prolonged and vigorous cross-examination of witnesses. But the judge's verdict was that all this effectively added nothing to the conclusion reached by Sotheby's expert Elizabeth Mitchell during what he acknowledged was a hurried visit to the Coleridge family home to inspect the collar: namely that there was no record of the chain prior to 1714 and that there was nothing to prove that it was not of post-Restoration manufacture.
This ultimately means that a court has decided the Chain is not certainly Tudor, so where that leaves the new owners, and Christie's, I don't really know. I'm no specialist in this field, but I saw it at the 2008 sale and it seemed to me entirely genuine, and of Tudor origin.
Drilling for Leonardo - Martin Kemp's view
March 19 2012
The noted Leonardo scholar, Professor Martin Kemp, has written some penetrative insights on the results from the Leonardo drilling in Florence. And you have to say that, from the drillers' point of view, they're not good:
The search is important. It has been underway, on and off, since the late 1970s. It needs to be resolved one way or the other. Maurizio Seracini, who is leading the investigation, has the skills to pursue it. If the unfinished Battle of Anghiari - the central knot of fighting horsemen - is discovered in legible condition, it will be one of the greatest art finds of any era - much like the unearthing of Laocoon. The timing and handling of the announcement is, however, unfortunate, and is clearly driven by political, media and, I guess, financial imperatives. The mayor is pressed by critics, and Maurizio presumably needs funding to be sustained. The timing is also related to screening of the National Geographic TV programme on the search. The whole project over the years has been dogged by premature ejaculations via the press. This, as I know from the story of the portrait in vellum, is precisely how not to secure scholarly assent. I have been fed bits of somewhat garbled information by the media.
It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:
1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;
2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;
3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;
4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;
5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;
6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.
This all seems to undermine the confident messages coming from Florence. Meanwhile, over on the indispensable 3 Pipe Problem, we find news that a total of six holes were drilled (a planned seventh was abandoned), as well as the views of Dr Cristina Acidini, the Superintendent of the Polo Museale in Florence. She seems to be more persuaded than Kemp that the pigments found so far can certainly be linked to Leonardo. But note the final sentence of her remarks:
We are dealing with a winding road. Now it is necessary to go deeply into these initial results of the investigation and months will be required to carry out the necessary analyses. When we reach the end, there might be a disappointment. As of today, our only certainty is that there is an intervening space and that there are the same substances that Leonardo used for the Gioconda and the Saint John the Baptist....it is now necessary to proceed step by step, using non-invasive methods.
In other words, if you think we're going to start removing more bits of Vasari to get to the Battle of Anghiari - if it remains - think again.
Regular readers will remember that when the drilling plan was first mooted, I was fairly relaxed about it. As Professor Kemp notes, to find even a fragment of Leonardo's lost work will be exciting. But there is something grating and unnecessarily flamboyant about the way the latest procedures and results have been announced to the world. So far, the evidence that we are dealing with a lost Leonardo is very thin. For example, it looks as if the sophisticated endoscopic cameras inserted into the supposed gap behind the Vasari can show a great deal of information, and relay easily viewable images. I suspect, therefore, that if they had spotted anything like a flat painted surface, we would know about it. There is, of course, the possibility that the best bits of footage are being kept for the National Geographic's programme - perhaps there really will be a glimpse of a hoof, or a finger.
And yet I can't shake the sense that the discovery of a few old flakes of paint, which may or may not relate to Leonardo, constitute an anticlimax for the team behind the search. For if they had found that glimpse of finger, they wouldn't need to test any paint. It would incontrovertibly be the Leonardo. In the meantime, we have beamed images to millions of people around the world which say that no matter how implausible your theory (and please let's get over this Da Vinci Code-like idea that just because Vasari wrote 'Cerca Trova' he was suggesting there was a Leonardo behind his painting) it's ok to start drilling into old masterpieces. Is art history really the winner in all this? Not yet.
Hirst, the art market, and keeping up values
March 19 2012
In The Guardian, the writer Hari Kunzru casts a thoughtful glance at Hirst values, and looks at how both dealers and institutions can help keep them up:
If I were Larry Gagosian (usually cited in power lists as the contemporary art world's most important player) and I wanted to help my top client shore up the value of a body of work that was losing its lustre as its fashionable 90s aesthetic began to look tired, and the penny started to drop among collectors that at every other dinner party they went to they saw something on the wall that looked awfully similar to the something on their own wall, what would I do?
Long-term value in the art world depends in a certain raw way on scarcity, but is largely produced through a delicate process by which aesthetic value (determined by curators and critics) intersects with market value, determined ultimately by auction prices. One point at which these two types of value intersect is in provenance. The story behind an object – its past owners, where it has been shown, its place in the story of the artist's career, and so on – confers both types of value. A landmark show, geographically dispersed in an unprecedented way, is bound to be remembered as a significant moment in Hirst's career as a global art star. When that show is accompanied by a critical apparatus, chiefly a catalogue raisonnée (a meticulously documented list of works shown, accompanied by scholarly essays), those works become part of a canon and a magical walled garden of significance is erected around them.
As Francis Outred, Christie's European head of contemporary art, told the Economist, this catalogue "could bring reassuring clarity to the question of volume". The pharmaceutical paintings are frankly too financially valuable to too many people for their actual status (banal, mass-produced, decorative) to intrude on the consensus fiction that they are scarce and important. The owners of the 1,100 paintings not in the Gagosian show should be nervous, though. They just lost their AAA rating.
Presumably, the forthcoming Tate show will fuel the beast for a little longer. Meanwhile, even I hear rumours of auction houses actively turning away Hirsts at the moment. There are just too many. And if they all went into auction at the same time...
US National Gallery joins the free image revolution
March 16 2012
Picture: NGA
Rejoice! From the US National Gallery:
The National Gallery of Art announces the launch today of NGA Images, a new online resource that revolutionizes the way the public may interact with its world-class collection at http://images.nga.gov. This repository of digital images documenting the National Gallery of Art collection allows users to search, browse, share, and download images believed to be in the public domain, underscoring the Gallery's mission and national role in making its collection images and information available to scholars, educators, and the general public.
Designed by Gallery experts to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration, NGA Images features more than 20,000 open access digital images, up to 3,000 pixels each, available free of charge for download and use.
With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain (those not subject to copyright protection). Under the open access policy, users may download any of these images free of charge and without seeking authorization from the Gallery for any use, commercial or non-commercial.
Says the reader who alerted me to this good news:
Meanwhile, the Tate and NPG have their fingers in the dyke...
Friday Amusement
March 16 2012
Picture: Cartoonstock
Getty acquires new Watteau discovery
March 16 2012
Picture: Getty Museum
Exciting news from Los Angeles, where the Getty has acquired the above picture by Watteau, The Italian Comedians. There is, however, a twist. Not everyone agrees it is by Watteau. From the LA Times:
Depending on which expert you ask, it is either a rare large canvas by one of France's greatest artists, Jean-Antoine Watteau, or the work of somebody else.
Scott Schaefer, the Getty's senior curator of paintings, said that before deciding about a month ago to buy the oil painting from a London art dealer, museum leaders sought opinions from "almost all major Watteau scholars in the world," each of whom had seen the painting in person.
The vote was 7-3 in favor of it being either solely by Watteau, who was 36 when he died in 1721, or a canvas the master had left unfinished, to be completed by another hand — possibly his student, Jean-Baptiste Pater, to whom the painting was sometimes attributed during the 20th century.
"It's so emotionally engaging that, for us, it can only be by Watteau," Schaefer said from Maastricht, the Netherlands, where he was attending the annual European Fine Art Fair.
The doubters, he said, did not say who they believed had painted the piece, which is 3 feet wide and slightly more than 4 feet tall. "But everyone, including the naysayers, thought it was a magnificent picture."
As revealed on AHN here at the time, the picture came up at auction last year in France, where it was catalogued as 'Circle of Watteau', and with an estimate of EUR40-60,000. The picture was enticingly catalogued, with plenty of supporting evidence to suggest the picture was by Watteau, such as preparatory drawings by him. I remember thinking it looked like a very fine picture, but that other specialist dealers who knew more than I do about French painting were sure to bid on it. And lo, it made a hammer price of EUR 1 million. You can watch a video of it selling here. Although I haven't seen the picture in the flesh, I don't doubt that the Getty wouldn't have bought it unless they and others were absolutely sure it was by Watteau. So many congratulations to them, and to the London dealer who bought it. It's always good to see the art trade contributing to art history with important discoveries like this.
More details on the Getty site here.
Feedback
March 16 2012
Two contrasting views. A learned reader writes:
I just wanted to relate that I was very surprised at the way the Anghiari drilling was portrayed on your site. I know there is a subtle sense of humour in some of your posts, so am putting it down to that as I don't think you are the type to get swayed by that type of thing.
And a leading UK art historian writes:
...I have just read your reaction to the dazzling Zoffany show and feel I should say how much I agree with you in every respect. In the present mealy-mouthed and politically-driven art world we need more straight-talking commentaries like yours, if I may say so.
Picasso's 'Child with Dove' - for sale, but you can't know the price.
March 15 2012
Picture: Courtauld/Tate
A while ago I revealed that one of Picasso's most iconic early paintings was being put up for sale. The 'guide price' advertised by the Arts Council is £50m, but because the picture is under a tax liability (that is, inheritance tax has been deferred, so must be paid when the picture is sold), nobody knows how much a museum would really have to pay to buy the work. Handily, the Treasury would write the tax balance off. So I asked the Arts Council what a museum would have to raise to keep the picture in the UK, but due to taxpayer confidentiality, we can't be told. Here is ACE's response:
Picasso’s Child With A Dove is an item granted conditional exemption from capital taxation and can be purchased by a public organisation (museum, gallery or archive) at a price that is beneficial to both public purchaser and private vendor – this being known as a Private Treaty Sale. The tax remitted value will be given to any Schedule 3 museum or gallery which is seriously interested in pursuing the purchase.
A similar current case is the Manet being pursued by the Ashmolean at the moment - they have to raise £7.8m - but in fact it is worth about £28m. My guess is that the Picasso would cost a UK museum considerably more - but it might just be doable. Let's hope so.
A rare Tudor survival
March 15 2012
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
Last night at the gallery we hosted the launch of Tudor historian Suzannah Lipscomb's new book, the enjoyable and thoroughly useful Visitor's Companion to Tudor England. In her speech, Suzannah mentioned some of the only remains of Henry VIII's magnificent Nonsuch Palace, a series of painted canvas panels at Loseley Park in Surrey generally accepted to have been commissioned for Nonsuch. This reminded me that some years ago we handled two of the panels (above), showing Juno and Neptune. And since they haven't been widely published, I thought I would post them here, for any Tudor art lovers among you.
The two panels had left the Loseley Collection when they were given to John Paul Getty in the 1980s. We bought them after Getty's death, when they were sold by his estate through a London auction house. The auctioneers hadn't really grasped the importance of what they had, and we were lucky enough to acquire them. Like the rest of the set at Loseley, the panels were covered in literally centuries of over-paint and dirt. We were able to remove this, so in these two panels at least, we can see them more or less as Henry VIII would have seen them all those years ago. What surprised us most about what emerged was the overall quality. The detail and colouring is quite sophisticated, especially for English 16th Century decorative painting.
Here is my research note on the panels. It looks at the probable artist, Antonio Toto del Nunziato (1499-1554), one of many Italian itinerant painters working at the Tudor court.
ATTRIBUTED TO ANTONIO TOTO DEL NUNZIATO (1499-1554)
The Nonsuch Panels’
Oil on Canvas; 50 by 17 ¾ inches, 127 x 45 cm
Provenance
Commissioned for Henry VIII; In the possession of Sir Thomas Cawarden (c.1514–1559); His executor Sir William More (1520–1600); By descent at Loseley Park Surrey to Mr & Mrs James More-Molyneux; Until gifted to John Paul Getty c.1980, at Sutton Place, Surrey.
Literature
Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, Edward Croft-Murray, London 1962, Vol. I p.18, Vol II p.313. Marcus Binney, ‘Loseley Park’, Country Life, October 9th 1969.
These paintings are known by tradition as the ‘Nonsuch Panels’, due to their apparent origin at Nonsuch Palace, the greatest of Henry VIII’s Tudor palaces. They can be attributed with some certainty to Henry VIII’s Sergent Painter, Antonio del Nunziato, or, as he was known in England, Anthony Toto, and are part of a series of his only attributable works. They were painted c.1543-4, probably for an important royal celebration or Henry’s final wedding to Katherine Parr, and represent a rare and highly important survival of decorative art from the Tudor court.
The present panels are two of a larger surviving set of at least a dozen others at Loseley Park in Sussex, home of the More-Molyneux family for over four hundred years. The panels came to Loseley through Henry VIII’s Keeper of the Tents and Master of the Revels [1], Sir Thomas Cawarden, and there remained until the 1980s, when the present paintings were given to John Paul Getty. All scenes in the series depict classical figures, and are of varying condition. The present pair have been the subject of recent renovation, during which numerous layers of later overpaint have been removed.
The panels were first attributed to Anthony Toto by Edward Croft-Murray in his 1962 survey Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, on the basis of a listed receipt in Toto’s hand and signed by him “for painting of hatchements, arms and badges of the King’s to be set upon his Highness’s tents and pavilions” in the Loseley archives dated May 31st 1544 [Loseley MS 1893]. This view was reaffirmed by Marcus Binney in a 1969 article for Country Life. The present works would have been typical of the temporary ‘hatchements’ painted for the interior of a royal ‘tent’, or pavilion.
Further research by the present author has unearthed an additional, more comprehensive, description of the work carried out by Toto for Carwarden. The document, in Toto’s own hand, not only helps confirm the attribution of the present pictures, but sheds important light onto the activities of an artist in the Tudor court. It is undated, but was drawn up between 1544-47. The list of work carried out begins, “Things made and paynted for the kings Majestie by Antony Totto Serjeant Paynter [for] Sir Thomas Cardew Knyght” and goes onto detail a mass of heraldic hatchements “of the Kings Armes wt the beasts around the garter, and the Kings words [ie, motto]”, and large number of smaller “pensills paynted upon Burkeram wt the Kings badge” [Loseley MSS 1891/2]. There are also a number of painted earthenware pots listed, apparently for use in stables, suggesting that the riot of colour and decoration seen in the present paintings was employed in even the most mundane corners of the court.
If on the home page, click 'Read on' for more.
It has not been possible to determine with absolute certainty whether the present paintings are included in Toto’s list. Although the receipt is specific about size and numbers of each work, the content of all the pictures is not listed in enough detail, and this series of paintings has been cut down from their original sizes. However, some of the smaller heraldic devices Toto mentions can still be found at Loseley today. And, since they are painted on the same canvas support, and in what is clearly a similar hand as the present pair of classical scenes, the attribution to Toto can be made with confidence. Thus the only known surviving works of this artist (and the only survival of a painted decoration done by an Italian in this period) can now be better understood. These elaborate works, meant only as temporary decorations for the King’s tents, demonstrate the extent to which every surface on which the royal eye might alight was decorated with intense colour, and the latest fashionable designs.
Anthony Toto, or Totto as he himself seems to have preferred, trained under Ridolfo Ghirlandaio in Florence. He came to England in 1519 with the sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who is regarded as the first bringer of the Renaissance into English art. Vasari records Toto as not only an artist, but also as an architect, who designed the King’s ‘principale palazzo’, thought to be Nonsuch Palace, although it is not known if this refers to design of the palace as a whole, or the decorated interior. Toto was in royal employ from 1530, from when he received the salary of £25 per year, a hefty sum later bolstered by grants of land and a licence to export 600 barrels of beer a year.
Toto was therefore clearly highly valued at court, and was appointed Serjeant Painter in January 1544. He worked on some of the most important royal decorative schemes, from Jane Seymour’s funeral to the designing Henry VIII’s hearse, and is recorded in the New Year’s gifts as presenting Edward VI with a portrait of a Duke. Toto may be the “Mr Anthony” referred to in Holbein’s will, as being left £10. If ‘Mr Anthony’ is Toto, then it is conceivable that he was somehow in Holbein’s employ. This would not only settle the much-discussed issue of whether Holbein had a studio, but would suggest a highly plausible candidate for one of Holbein’s able assistants. But whether he worked for Holbein or not, Toto was the most important Italian artist at work in Henry’s court.
The presence of Katherine Parr’s cypher on similar paintings at Loseley suggests that Toto was under the direct patronage of this famously art-loving queen at the time the present pictures were painted. Although the receipts from Toto to Cawarden are dated 1544 onwards, it is not unlikely that the panels were painted earlier, possibly even for the celebrations of Henry and Katherine’s wedding in July 1543, and that Toto was only paid the following year. What is certain, however, is that the present paintings were part of the renewed burst in artistic activity under Katherine. We already know that she was instrumental in almost all the royal portrait commissions of the period, but now a reassessment of the present pictures illustrates that she was also involved in the more day to day artistic decorations at court.
The nature of the designs in the present panels gives an intriguing glimpse into how Renaissance ideals made their way into Britain in the early sixteenth century. One possible source of the designs for the present paintings and the other “Nonsuch Panels’ must be the set of Flemish tapestries commissioned by Henry between 1540-2. The tapestries, some of which can still be seen on display at Hampton Court, were based on earlier designs by the studio of Raphael for the Pope, and consist of a number of classical and biblical scenes such as the Story of Abraham and the Triumph of Hercules (both have obvious connotations for how Henry saw himself). Deciding with any certainty which artists made the initial tapestry design is, through lack of evidence, speculative. But recent research has led to an attribution to Francesco Penni and Giovanni da Udine, working between 1517-20. This attribution may be of importance to the understanding of the present paintings, and the spread of similar designs in English painting.
Giovanni da Udine, or Nanni as he is sometimes known, was a pioneer of grotesque art in the early sixteenth century. An assistant of Raphael in Rome at the time of the discovery of antique ruins in the baths of Titus and other sites, Udine was selected to copy and make designs from the large numbers of grotesques discovered. The clear similarity between the style and structure of the grotesques in Udine’s tapestries and Toto’s designs serves as a vivid illustration of the final step in the transport of similar Renaissance ideals into English art, which, notwithstanding the unique brilliance of Holbein, slipped imperceptibly from Roman ruin, to Raphael’s studio, to Flemish tapestry, and finally, Toto’s brush.
It may be that the borders of both the ‘Triumph’ and the ‘Abraham’ tapestries are particularly relevant to the present pictures. The central scene from the Triumph of Hercules, one of seven “Triumphs of the Gods”, shows Hercules standing in a classical tabernacle, similar to the two gods Neptune and Juno in the present works. The border for each tapestry scene is surrounded by a series of grotesques and architectural features containing standing figures, often supported on caryatids, such as can be found in the Nonsuch panels. It is possible, therefore, that the Nonsuch panels were designed to stand vertically on top of others, and to surround another central painted scene.
[1] The clerk’s official dog-Latin description sounds better; “Officium magistri jocorum revelorum et mascorum omnium et singulorum nostrorum.”
"Prado copy proves Mona Lisa was painted later"
March 15 2012
Picture: Museo Prado/Royal Collection
The latest theory spinning off from the Prado's much-hyped copy of the Mona Lisa is that it proves Leonardo finished the original much later than thought, possibly up to 1519. He began it in 1503. This is because, say specialists at the Prado, infra-red images of a part of the background in the copy relate to a drawing of rocks by Leonardo in the Royal Collection, which is dated on stylistic grounds to 1510-15. From The Art Newspaper:
When the Prado copy was being studied, infrared images revealed that a section of the original design for the rocks beneath the paint surface had been based on a drawing now in the Royal Collection. Martin Clayton, the senior curator at the Windsor print room, dates the drawing to 1510-15 on stylistic grounds.
The Prado copy of the Mona Lisa was worked on side by side with the Louvre painting, so this connection has important implications for the dating of Leonardo’s original.
Louvre specialists went back to photographs taken of the original Mona Lisa in 2004. They realised that the design for part of the rocks on the right side in the Prado copy also appears in the underdrawing of the original, in a blurred form. This can just be made out in an emissiograph, an image made using an x-ray technique.
I must say, I don't like conclusions based on images that 'can just be made out' in x-rays. Anyway, have a look for yourself at the images, and see if you can spot the compelling similarities between the rocks in the Royal Collection drawing, and the rocks in the under-drawing in the Prado copy. No - I can't either. They look vaguely similar, that's all.
So it seems we're back to over-interpretation of the infra-red images again. Incidentally, if the Mona Lisa really was painted over a much longer period than previously believed, doesn't that make it less likely that the Prado's copy was painted alongside it? I can't quite get my head round the concept of Leonardo beginning a painting in 1503, and then having some student sit alongside him, in different countries, following him slavishly till as late as 1519. It doesn't make any sense. And who was this long-suffering student of whom we have never heard?
Turner's not-Claude Claude
March 14 2012
Picture: BG
I was intrigued by this little picture at the new National Gallery 'Turner & Claude' exhibition. It used to belong to Turner, and he thought it was by Claude - his hero. But modern scholars now say it has nothing to do with Claude. Which is all rather sad, don't you think?
I've no idea if it is by Claude or not - but my only thought would be that it's hard to make an attribution either way, given that it is a) dirty b) somewhat over-painted and c) under a thick yellow varnish. It would be fun to clean the picture, and see what it really looks like. You can read more about the work here.
At Maastricht, an important new Van Dyck discovery
March 14 2012
Picture: Agnews
Much of the world's art trade has now decamped to a cavernous conference centre outside Maastricht, for The European Fine Art Fair (known as TEFAF). Every year, literally hundreds of dealers descend on the small Dutch town for what has been the leading art and antiques fair in Europe, if not the world. It's a highly impressive set up. Usually they're followed by just as many private jets, carrying collectors, advisers and, best of all, sheikhs. But last year sales were down, and there is talk of the fair losing some of its lustre (not least because London, which has always lacked an international antiques fair, is at last getting its act together with Masterpiece).
As ever, the trade will have some tantalising recent discoveries to present. A good example this year is from Agnews, who have an important grisaille by Van Dyck (above). It is a previously unknown first design for Van Dyck's most important English painting, The Great Peece [Royal Collection], showing Charles I, Henrietta Maria, Charles II and Mary, Princess Royal. You can zoom in on the grisaille here, and the finished picture here. Note how the figures differ in the final composition.
"Critics turn on 'Turner & Claude' at the National Gallery"
March 13 2012
Picture: BG
That's not my headline, but Reuters'. Adrian Searle in The Guardian and Richard Dorment in The Telegraph dislike the National Gallery's new 'Turner & Claude' exhibition so much, it seems, that their response is the basis for a news story itself.
First, here's Searle:
Quite why the National Gallery is bringing together the British landscape painter with the 17th-century French classical landscapist, I can only wonder. It is only three years since Tate Britain mounted Turner and the Masters, a fascinating overview of his rivalries and influences – including Claude Lorrain.
Most of the works here are in British collections, the majority from Tate Britain and the National Gallery itself. There are only three major foreign loans, all from the US. So it will cost you £12 to see lots of paintings we already own. Perhaps the exhibition is intended to give respite to all the guards who had to shepherd the fainting, weeping and often hysterical crowds around its recent Leonardo show. Turner apparently burst into tears when he first saw Claude's 1648 Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba. As well as being moved, he probably realised how far he would have to go to beat Claude as a painter. There is nothing new in this observation; nor does this exhibition have anything new to say about the relationship between the two artists.
And here's Richard Dorment, in a petulant mood:
For the life of me, I can’t understand why the National Gallery has gone to so much trouble to tell us something that most people with an interest in British art already know. [...]
The show is a muddle from start to finish. The best I can say about it is that the curators have borrowed some wonderful pictures to hang alongside much-loved warhorses from the National Gallery and Tate. But in the catalogue essays, art historians are given carte blanche to waffle on for page after page explaining ideas that could be written on the back of a postcard.
Don’t get me started on the labels: surely there are limits to the number of synonyms curators may use for “soft”, “glow” and “light”. And you only have to tell us once that Turner left Sunlight Rising through Vapour to the National Gallery in his will.
After seeing the exhibition, I found myself writing a single word in my notebook, but that word happens to be the kiss of death for any exhibition: “Why?”
To which the only response is, well why not? Both Dorment and Searle make the common mistake of thinking exhibitions always have to teach us something 'new'. Personally, I see nothing wrong in putting on shows that just have good pictures, well displayed. One of the nice things about the exhibition is that it isn't constantly trying to impress the visitor with a new theory, or a different idea in each room. Instead, it is a pleasant and gentle extended essay on two of landscape art's greatest proponents. I liked it very much. The rooms are well presented (really, we must stop whingeing about the Sainsbury Wing exhibition space - it's fine), and the pictures are given plenty of space, which is essential for Turner's larger works.
Searle's moan about there being only three major foreign loans is pretty daft, for a key point of the exhibition is that English collectors were so obsessed with Claude that fully half his works were in England by the 1820s. Those that Turner drew particular inspiration from (in the collections of Angerstein, Beaumont and Beckford) went on to become some of the central pictures in our permanent collections. And of course it was Turner's explicit desire that many of his best works remained in public ownership in the UK. So we should be glad that we don't have to look overseas to fill an exhibition like this.
Incidentally, I don't know which catalogue Dorment was reading, but it can't have been the one which accompanies this exhibition. The lavishly illustrated catalogue for this show is shorter than usual NG exhibition catalogues, and the essays, which I thought were excellent, even shorter. There is no waffle.
For better or worse, critics in the national press have the power, collectively, to make or break a show like this, and by extension have an impact on the National Gallery's reputation. In my view they therefore have a responsibility not to write off major exhibitions so glibly. For in the space of just over a month, the National Gallery has finished hosting a stellar success in Leonardo, bought a £45m Titian, and now presents us with 'Turner & Claude'. And I think that's pretty damn good.
Leonardo for models
March 13 2012
Leonardo drilling - a waste of time?
March 13 2012
Yes, says Mark Hudson in the Telegraph, and sets out the history of Leonardo's original commission, and that of Michelangelo's on the wall opposite:
In fact, the whole thing was a fiasco from first to last. The two artists had as little to do with each other as possible. Leonardo, who had had problems with fresco – tempera on wet plaster – while working on the ‘Last Supper’, took the unprecedented step of applying oil paint directly onto the wall. A thunderstorm created excessive humidity, causing the colours to drip and merge into each other. Discouraged, he abandoned the project.
Michelangelo completed a cartoon, or full scale drawing, but had barely begun the painting itself when he was called to Rome to work on the tomb of Pope Julius II, whereupon his cartoon was destroyed by a jealous rival.
These unfinished, compromised works faced each other across the hall for half a century, before the Florentine authorities decided to get some proper frescoes painted over them in 1555 by Giorgio Vasari, author of ‘Lives of the Artists’, a brilliant chronicler of the artists of his age, but a mediocre painter.
Leonardo’s painting is known principally from a powerful drawing by Rubens, made from a later engraving. Michelangelo’s work, a supremely unrealistic catalogue of male nudity, is known from a copy of his cartoon made by a pupil.
Both of these works and the preparatory drawings produced for them, have been not only endlessly ‘quoted’ over the centuries by artists of the order of Titian, but have been talked and fantasised into a kind of cult-phenomenon.
While it would be wonderful to get further insights into either of them – and in the wake of the London Leonardo exhibition interest couldn’t be higher – I’m not going to get over excited on the strength of two holes bored into a wall and a few minute fragments of plaster.
Vasari may have been a self-serving opportunist, but he genuinely revered both artists and it’s impossible to believe he would have painted over a significant work by either of them. There is of course the currently much discussed possibility that he painted onto a false wall erected to save Leonardo’s painting.
Yet even if a substantial chunk of the Battle of Anghiari is unearthed I suspect the experience will be disappointing. Not only will it be in a deleterious condition, but rather like those lost and legendary albums you wait half a lifetime to hear, only to find your internal life somehow the poorer for the experience, the idea of Leonardo’s painting may prove to be far more potent and inspiring than the actuality.
Face it folks, there's no Leonardo here
March 13 2012
Filming drilling for Leonardo
March 12 2012
